Nina Coveney

Nina Coveney graduated from Cornell University in 2011 with a B.S. in Urban and Regional Studies. When she began as a blogger with Global Site Plans, she worked for the Town of Ithaca, New York Planning Department. She then transitioned - in writing and real life - to New York City where she began working in the Events department of the Bryant Park Corporation. She hopes to eventually pursue a Master’s Degree in urban planning and design. A native of the New York City metro area, she blogged about trends in sustainability, housing, transportation, and adaptive reuse in both Ithaca and the Big Apple until April 2012.

As my 6-month internship with Global Site Plans coasts to a gentle close this week, I find myself in a much different place than when I began blogging for the GRID in October 2011.
In the beginning, I was a recent col... Read article

We’ve all had the experience of peacefully strolling along a city street at night, enjoying the scene around us. We’ve also had the experience of walking somewhere after dark where we feel unsafe, and hurrying to reach o... Read article

The subway system in New York City is one of the most extensive public transit systems in the world. Nonetheless, the number of people living, working, and traveling through the East Side has been steadily increasing sin... Read article

Bogota, Curitiba, and Guayaquil are very different South American cities that share something in common: they have the most successful and longest-running BRT systems in the world. BRT stands for Bus Rapid Transit, w... Read article

Public space is an essential element for the sustainability, vitality and sanity of a dense urban environment like New York City. In recent years, NYC’s urban planners and transportation engineers have made efforts to g... Read article

As a Cornellian, I was very excited back in December to hear about Cornell University’s winning bid to construct a technology and engineering campus in New York City (NYC). NYC will provide 10 acres of land on Roosev... Read article

Affordable housing, as defined by the U.S. government, enables qualified residents to put 30% of their income toward housing while the government subsidizes the rest of the cost. While New York City (N.Y.C.) upholds this... Read article

Considering New York City, New York (NYC) contains 5.2 billion ft2 of built space parceled out among a million buildings, and that the building sector emits 79% of the city’s greenhouse gases, the importance of susta... Read article

The potential for waterfront redevelopment has been a recent hot topic of debate here in Ithaca, New York. Ithaca’s waterfront consists of the southern end of Cayuga Lake, which is mostly parkland and upscale residen... Read article

The Downtown Ithaca Alliance has released the Downtown Ithaca 2020 Strategic Plan, which seeks to revitalize Ithaca, New York’s downtown business district and reposition the Ithaca Commons as a sustainable transit-orient... Read article

Ithaca, New York in the Finger Lakes region is known for its natural beauty. Its dramatic landscape of pastoral hills and valleys, deep gorges, rushing waterfalls, and glittering lakes have created many faithful res... Read article

It is becoming clear that young people and retirees favor a compact urban lifestyle to the sprawl of suburbia, as the cultural value of owning a large home and multiple cars erodes in our resour... Read article

“Rails-to-Trails” is an example of how urban planners and urban designers are repurposing abandoned rail corridors for use as pedestrian and bicycle trails. As of September 2010, there were 19,872 miles of rail-trails in... Read article

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